Thinking with images in non-representational cities: vignettes from Berlin Alan Latham* and Derek P McCormack* *Department of Geography, University College London, London WC1E 6BT **School of Geography, School of Geography and Environment, Oxford OX1 3QY Email: derek.mccormack@ouce.ox.ac.uk Revised manuscript received 22 September 2008 Thinking about and with images has long been central to the practice of geographical fieldwork. This paper considers how the participation of images in urban-based fieldwork might be understood in the wake of non-representational theories. Drawing upon our experience of co-teaching an urban-based field course in Berlin, we discuss three ways in which such theories allow us to make more of the participation of images in the thinking- spaces of urban fieldwork. Specifically, we consider how images afford opportunities for attending to everyday ecologies of materials and things; for thinking through the rhythms of urban environments; and for producing affective archives. In concluding we suggest that thinking with images in urban fieldwork can be understood as part of the elaboration of ecologies of non-representational ethico-aesthetic practices. Key words: Berlin, fieldwork, images, non-representational theory, photography, urban geography Introduction The critical analysis of images has been one of the central themes within human geography over the past two decades (Rose 2007). From painting (Cosgrove 1985; Tolia-Kelly 2007), maps (Harley 2001), photography (Crang 1997; Schwartz and Ryan 2003; Rose 2008), to film (Cresswell and Dixon 2002; Doel and Clark 2007), geographers have engaged in diverse ways with the role images play in shaping and contesting the meaning of place and space. Paralleling these efforts, there has also been sustained critical reflection upon the role images play within the knowledge practices of the discipline itself (see, for example Crang 2003; Driver 2003; Matless 2003; Rose 2003). As part of this, geographers have begun to engage seriously with the role that images – and particularly photographs – play in the elaboration and enactment of distinctive fieldwork techniques for generating materials in diverse research and pedagogical contexts (Sidaway 2002; Latham 2003; Authors 2007; Rose 2008; Degan et al. 2008). In this paper we contribute to these ongoing engagements with images by considering how their participation in human geographical fieldwork is agitated, inflected and animated by the emergence of non-representational styles of thinking (Thrift 2007). More specifically, in the vein of recent interventions in this journal (Laurier and Philo 2006) and elsewhere (Larsen 2008), we are interested in how such styles of work allow us – in our capacities as both researchers and educators – to make more of images. 1 Our point of departure is the belief that non- representational theories encourage us to ask two intimately interrelated questions. First, what is an image? Clearly, non-representational theories are not the only theories that pose this question. Nor do they provide the only answer (see, for instance, Manghani et al. 2006). But these theories do ask – with particular insistence – that we try to think of images as something other than just representations. There is a range of possible sources of support for thinking images in this way (see for instance Nancy 2005; Rancière 2007). Here, however, we want to Area (2009) 41.3, 252–262 doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2008.00868.x Area Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 252–262, 2009 ISSN 0004-0894 © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009